Deja Vu
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [Cyber Sleuth/Frontier] Why did they feel so wrong in their own bodies?
1. Part 1

**A/N:** Written for

Diversity Writing Challenge, c6 – threeshot with chapters exactly 500 words each  
Ultimate Sleuth Challenge, ch 2 – Kowloon level 2/EDEN Community Area – ficletchap  
Becoming the Tamer King Challenge, Training Peak – drabblechap/ficletchap

* * *

 **Déjà vu  
** _Part 1/3_

Something was wrong with the whole situation.

She shouldn't be able to see her brother, lying there. _Should_ be able to feel his ghost, lingering nearby. She wasn't sure why she knew those things, but she did, and both of them were wrong.

Because there her twin brother was, lying in that hospital bed and growing paler by the day, slowly whittling away and they were both in the wrong places, doing the wrong things.

Lately, everything about their lives seemed wrong…or most of those things. Her long hair felt normal – though she'd been tying it up more, recently. Felt more comfortable like that. And her brother had been twisting his far shorter locks around a finger and contemplating a haircut before he'd fallen unconscious.

The doctors said he'd fallen _sick_. She knew better. Felt that sharp pain of something striking, even if there was no wound on his body to show for it. They'd even scanned the brain at her insistence (and their own inability to work out _exactly_ what was wrong with him) and found absolutely nothing.

Nothing – and yet there was an itch at the back of her mind that told her she should _know_ what had happened to him…and worse, should know how to fix it.

Except she didn't. Or she couldn't grasp that chain of thought and do something with it.

And it wasn't just the abnormality surrounding that – or maybe it was related: the uncomfortable sensation of not quite fitting into their own bodies. Puberty, they'd put it down to, but that couldn't be quite right. It was very unlikely a girl and a boy of the same age would undergo puberty at the same time, and on the same trajectory. They were both book smart. They'd seen those pretty graphs in dual colours and knew what to expect. And wondered why she hadn't gotten her menarche _still_ and barely had any breast buds to speak of. Though Yuugo had seemed amused at the time, and commented that she was too much of a tomboy to be comfortable with womanhood hitting her in the face.

But that was the problem. Womanhood _hadn't_ hit her in the face, and as for her brother, he grew increasingly distant until one day he just wasn't _there_ anymore.

EDEN syndrome, they called it months later. She knew it was wrong but she didn't know why. His mind wasn't wandering in cyberspace. It was wandering…

Where? She knew this. Somewhere she'd been. Somewhere she'd held a sword far more fitting than the wooden ones she trained with at the dojo – and that was another thing. Her brother's paint brushes. Her practice swords. It was like the callouses on their hands were used to different tools but they'd been using the same things for a while. That hadn't changed.

Rather, it was like _they_ were the ones that had changed, slipping into different bodies and different lives…and now her brother had wandered off and left her…

That wasn't right either.


	2. Part 2

**Déjà vu  
** _Part 2/3_

This was the digital world, but for some reason, it didn't look like it. And no matter how much time he spent there, he wandered, lost.

They started calling him a ghost. He let them, because somehow that felt more true than calling the place he wandered the digital world. And as he wandered, he found more and more things that just didn't click, or seemed missing. More and more things that didn't make sense, as though this was just a dream and he'd lost touch with reality.

For starters, his twin wasn't here. Twin brother – no, sister – _wait, what?_ That loop of thought plagued him often, but as far as he could follow, it had started as sister and was now leaning towards brother. Which was ridiculous, because however tomboyish Yuuko was, she'd never identified as anything other than a girl – or she'd never told him otherwise, anyway.

And then there was the quarter-going-on-half times he'd accidentally thought of her as a _Kouji_ instead, before his memory caught up with him. But it was fitting more and more neatly. Kouji, instead of Yuuko. But why? And where had the name Kouji even come from?

The pieces were too scattered to fit together, and his wanderings revealed no more – though he did happen upon the trains one time and wonder why they didn't talk – before realising how ridiculous that sounded. Unless there were train-like digimon… And after a few more visits to the trains, he remembered their name. Trailmon. And there'd been a few different ones as well, but the names of those eluded him.

Just like there were names for all the humans who came and went, but they mostly eluded him as well. And, sometimes, he found himself glancing around as though there _should_ be others with him… and not just Yuuko/Kouji, but _others_ too. But they Kamishiro twins had been very solitary. Only each other and their father. _Only him and his mother…_

It was all too confusing. And it only got moreso when he stumbled back into the human world, so far stretched that he had no idea if he was awake or asleep, dead or alive, Yuugo or Kouichi, and most importantly, he had no idea where Yuuko/Kouji was.

But then he found his hospital room, and things began to click into place.

Kamishiro Yuugo, twin brother of Kamishiro Yuugo and son of Kamishiro Satoru and a mother he'd never known.

Kimura Kouichi, twin brother of Minamoto Kouji and son of Minamoto Kousei and Kimura Tomoko.

Two entirely separate people. And somehow they'd gotten crossed over. EDEN syndrome or whatever was the truth behind it for Yuugo. That fall that had taken him to the digital world for Kouichi. And four years in between, where they'd both wondered why their bodies felt so wrong and Kouji/Yuuko more than him – and no wonder. It was all so obvious now.

And he eagerly sought out his brother/sister so they could fix this –

So why did he/she attack?


	3. Part 3

**Déjà vu  
** _Part 3/3_

Things had gotten too confusing. She was losing herself, she knew it, trying to play the part of her brother as well as her own.

It had seemed like a blessing at first, but now it was a curse.

Yuugo had to go. Or, rather, the avatar of Yuugo that she played had to go. The real Yuugo would still be there, beyond reach, slumbering in the throes of something neither she nor the doctors understood. But this… the fake avatar she'd made, had to go.

So when she next found the white boy that was her own creation, she attacked before she could make out its words. And they were swallowed, by the roars of her digimon as they clash. And why the hell are they clashing? RizeGreymon's wings are locked with Machindramon's cannons. Machindramon, who's protecting it, protecting him.

And why the heck was the Yuugo avatar calling her "Kouji"? How could it even function with her at a terminal, inputting commands?

RizeGreymon struck again. Machindramon parried. Neither fought to the death, just fought for dominance. 'Why?' she asked loudly, asked them. Why is there a stalemate?

The avatar peeked out from behind Machindramon. 'Yuuko?' he tried. His voice was hesitant, unsure. 'What…what's wrong?'

'What's wrong?' Yuuko repeated, before snorting. 'Look at me, talking to my own avatar…'

'I'm not an avatar,' said the avatar, and so seriously, that Yuuko did a double-take – and then realised he was right. She could feel it – and she could always feel it, couldn't she? Her brother's soul. And Machindramon knew as well. That's why he defended. Maybe even RizeGreymon knew, and that was why he didn't push harder. Just locked them in that stalemate so the two of them could talk.

But that meant… 'You're…wandering around without your body?'

He shrugged and gave her a weak grin. 'Not the first time.'

'True,' she replied, before double-taking at that as well. Not the first time…so when was?

'Don't force it,' her brother told her quietly. 'The memories will come back.'

Memories that meant things fell out of place, meant things didn't make sense. Those memories – and at the end of them was the answer she hadn't found. 'Do you know it?' And suddenly, she sounded so _young_.

'Yes.' And then he flicked her on the forehead. 'There's no world in which that face suits you, you know.'

.

The memories do come back, eventually. And it's both comfortable and strange, to know she's not Kamishiro Yuuko in soul, but Minamoto Kouij because she's still stuck in Kamishiro Yuuko's body at the end of it. And it's nowhere near as awkward for his/her brother, because he's a boy both ways. But still, body doesn't fit quite right because it's not theirs.

But now that that problem's kind-of solved, they've got a new one. Where are their bodies? And where are the souls that go with this one.

It's another mission for the Kuremi Detective Agency, or maybe not. It's a little personal to tell.


End file.
